They're all having a hard time now that we have the internet, an anarchy if ever there was one...

… which is why the authoritarians are clamouring ever more loudly about some alleged “need” to regulate it. The Internet is perhaps the last bastion of appreciable freedom left to many people and so it’s only natural that all the paranoid, narcissistic, psychotic megalomaniacs want to bring it under their thumb. It’s about power, quite besides the financial benefits dinkum control can potentially enable. And, worrisomely, their successes are gradually mounting. Many of the despotic fads that pop up across the globe are also evident here in SA. It seems that slavery wasn’t really abolished; it was merely supplanted with slavish subservience in a swift and dizzying bit of legerdemain by the slave masters.

Authoritarian types seem to fall into two categories. One type is the leader - they feel deeply threatened when they are not in control. The other type is the follower who is desperate for a strong leader to tell them what to do and indeed even what to think. Both types are profoundly dangerous to society. In fact, many societies have been brought to utter ruin by extreme authoritarianism - just ask the Germans.

Economically I am more leftish. I don't mind government taxing me to give the poor a free ride. What I can't stand is the frickin' intrusive nanny state telling anyone and everyone how to live their lives.

This is unfortunately the problem described in a nutshell. Once the govt. is paying for your medicine and/or your children, they develop a very immediate interest in your personal habits: Because those habits will cost them money. This way nanny stateism lies.

Economically I am more leftish. I don't mind government taxing me to give the poor a free ride. What I can't stand is the frickin' intrusive nanny state telling anyone and everyone how to live their lives.

This is unfortunately the problem described in a nutshell. Once the govt. is paying for your medicine and/or your children, they develop a very immediate interest in your personal habits: Because those habits will cost them money. This way nanny stateism lies.

Yup, I have seen it argued that leftwing libertarianism (i.e. a regulated economy in an otherwise completely free society) is an impossible dream: give the state any power, and it will inevitably usurp ever more and more. I don't know if this is true. But the kind of vigilance you need from the populace seems never to last long. Within a generation or two of a nation achieving widespread prosperity, decadence sets in and with it, many people lose their vigilance, and others begin to actively clamour for government to "protect" them against this, that and the other.

And thus, free states seem to have a tendency to move towards police states.

In this case, probably actually has zilch to do with health - it's just an excuse to raise taxes. Which may well end up being paid by the poor, who are, I suspect, the chief consumers of sugary drinks.

Yeah that's the bother isn't it? Refined sugar is easy to tax so that's the devil, but all other carbohydrates in everything else we chow is not so easy to quantify. Why is the sugar in a fruit juice healther? Hmmm? Kids can ostensibly glug their newly "tax exempt" unsweetened, yet still sweet, fruit drinks as much as they want... hilarious if not so deeply sad.

Yeah that's the bother isn't it? Refined sugar is easy to tax so that's the devil, but all other carbohydrates in everything else we chow is not so easy to quantify. Why is the sugar in a fruit juice healther? Hmmm? Kids can ostensibly glug their newly "tax exempt" unsweetened, yet still sweet, fruit drinks as much as they want... hilarious if not so deeply sad.

The so-called 100% fruit juice usually consists of "pure fruit juice and deflavoured apple or grape juice." Which is the same thing as, erm, sugar. If memory serves, studies have shown that "100% pure" fruit juices are in fact more sugary and more fattening than Coke. They also tend to be quite acidic and I suspect they are worse on your teeth than Coke.

But the war on obesity, like the war on smoking, has a decided component of puritanical moralism to it. Coke and cigarettes aren't just wrong because they're bad for you. They are wrong because people enjoy them. Fruit juice, on the other hand, is all natural and contain vitamins, so there. For your own good, you will therefore be forced by government to switch to less immoral eating habits. Despite the fact that the honourable minister of finance looks like he can do with less sugar in his own diet...